BATON ROUGE - NCAA President Mark Emmert got a warm welcome home, complete with a Purple and Gold gift Wednesday before his speech to the Rotary Club.

Darron Cummings/The Associated Press archive archiveNCAA President Mark Emmert wasn't optimistic about a Division I football playoff but also said heâs ready for it when the NCAA members are.

Emmert, the former LSU Chancellor who took college athletics' top job five months ago, was handed an LSU cap after he was introduced to an overflow crowd. With a tip to the hazards of his new position, he made light of it as he popped the cap on his head and cameras flashed.

"That will be on 11 SEC bulletin boards before the day's over," he said, drawing a large round of laughter.

Emmert is well aware he has stepped into the white hot spotlight of college sports at a time that place rarely has been hotter. With issues ranging from a Division I football playoff to enforcement of recruiting rules to the impact of agents and athletes' off-field behavior, he said one of his first tasks was understanding what the NCAA does -- and doesn't do.

He has spent the past five months coming to a deeper understanding of the organization's role, and that it goes far beyond wins and losses and making money.

"What's been fascinating is the range of not just attitudes but beliefs about what the NCAA is and what it isn't and how often those are just dead wrong," said Emmert, who spent six years as President at the University of Washington between his five-year stint at LSU (1999-2004) and his current job.

"What we really do is help student-athletes, who are just students who happen to be play sports, be successful. We created the organization 105 years ago to provide students with fair and even competition, shape the rules of the game and protect students from injury and abuse.

"We're going to protect the model of collegiate athletics. It is a uniquely American phenomenon. No other nation on earth combines sports and athletics the way we do in the United States. It is truly American and well-worth preserving."

Emmert touted the overall academic accomplishments of college athletes, whom he said are shedding the "dumb jock" stereotype. He supplemented his argument with a one-minute video of a promotional ad that will air during the upcoming men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

"In every conference in the United States, all student athletes across all sports have higher graduation rates than non-student athletes," he said. "They stay in school longer and their probability of success is higher.

It's true for men, women and kids of every race and ethnicity.

"Do we have problems? Absolutely. Do we have issues to work on? You bet. And we're going to keep working on them aggressively."

Work already has begun on the player-procurement question that dominated the early part of the 2010 football season and mushroomed at the end with the revelation that Cam Newton's father, Cecil, had shopped his son's services for a price. Ultimately, the NCAA made a heavily criticized ruling that Newton - who won the Heisman Trophy and led Auburn to the BCS national title - was eligible.

That came on top of agent-gate in which players at North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama were ruled ineligible or suspended for accepting improper benefits.

Emmert called the Newton case "extraordinarily frustrating."

"I don't know anybody that would stand up and argue, not in anybody's rule book but as a moral principle, that a parent ought to be out shopping their son or daughter's athletic ability to the highest bidder," he said.

"Amazingly enough, there's not a rule that says you can't, because no one envisioned that someone would do that. Had $5 changed hands, that would have been a violation, and there would have been a proper response."

Emmert said his organization is moving fast to address the issue thoroughly and close all loopholes.

"For the first time in our history, we have all of the right people at the table to settle some of those issues - the NFL, the Players Association, states attorneys general, ADs, agents, our people, five leading coaches in the country. We've got the right folks saying 'How do we get our arms around this?'

"We're going to come up with some solutions. Will that solve the issue forever? No, but can we deal with these kinds of questions. Certainly, and we have to."

He was less optimistic about a Division I football playoff but also said he's ready for it when the NCAA members are.

"My position has been if the leadership of those universities want to move in that direction, then the NCAA knows how to run championships," he said. "We're pretty good at it, and we'd be happy to help.

"At same time ... one thing I know about (bowls) is 70 teams loved playing in them. Finding the right balance is going to be the challenge."